colm_l

Damn

lowerycm@gmail.com — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 19:16:55 GMT

My hands are killing me today. Partly it's because I cut my index finger, this morning, cleaning my pen knife (bloody thing cut through the cloth and my hand in one gentle motion. Good quality manufacture :P). Partly it's my finger joints being sore again. I feel like an old arthritic man...

Gamers was shut today at 6.30. When'd that start happening? Young whippersnappers...

Weirdly, I'm feeling pretty good today despite all that. May be the prospect of Cassidies tomorrow, Jonathan Coulton on Friday & Gaelcon over the weekend.

Pretty decent combination I reckon.

Avoiding Work

lowerycm@gmail.com — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 13:17:09 GMT

1) Are you currently in a serious relationship?
A. Nope.
2) What was your dream growing up?
A. inventing things – it’s changed somewhat since
3) What talent do you wish you had?
A. Linguistics would be nice. Languages are the one thing I’ve never been as good as I’d like at
4) If I bought you a drink what would it be?
A. Some type of beer or whiskey I’d imagine
5) Favorite vegetable?
A. Tomato
6) What was the last book you read?
A. the ringworld engineers
7) What zodiac sign are you?
A. Scorpio
8) Any Tattoos and/or Piercings? Explain where.
A. nope
9) Worst Habit?
A. Probably my protectiveness of my friends – I know it gets to some people
10) If you saw me walking down the street would you offer me a ride?
A. Of course. Assuming I was driving
11) What is your favorite sport?
A. Fencing or rugby
12) Do you have a Negative or Optimistic attitude?
A. Negative – always seeing the downside
13) What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with me?
A. Complain?
14) Worst thing to ever happen to you?
A. Tough one. Many to choose from – I’d guess either fucking my lungs or leg up would be high on the list. One made me stop horse-riding, the other made me drop rugby. Neither one was exactly great for me.
15) Tell me one weird fact about you.
A. While I couldn’t speak until I was four, I could reprogram and fix electronics by the age of three.
16) Do you have any pets?
A. Yep. One Cairn Terrier
17) What if i showed up at your house unexpectedly?
A. Well, last time I woke up and went out for a pint…
18) What was your first impression of me? (hmmm...careful!)
A. Why won’t that tall guy stop talking?
19) Do you think clowns are cute or scary?
A. Creepy rather than either
20) If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be?
A. probably my skin.
21) Would you be my crime partner or my conscience?
A. Partner in crime.
22) What color eyes do you have?
A. Brown
23) Ever been arrested?
A. nope
24) Bottle or can soda?
A. bottle
25) If you won $10,000 today, what would you do with it?
A. Not very much – I don’t even spend my current income.
27) What's your favorite place to hang at?
A. Cassidies
28) Do you believe in ghosts?
A. Nope
29) Favorite thing to do in your spare time?
A. hanging out with mates is pretty good.
30) Do you swear a lot?
A. fucking hell. Why ask? We’re Irish
31) Biggest pet peeve?
A. Hypocrisy – if you can’t hold yourself to a standard, don’t inflict it on others
32) In one word, how would you describe yourself?
A. anxious
33) Do you believe/appreciate romance?
A. To an extent.
35) Do you believe in God?
A. Yep- not in organized religion though
36) Will you repost this so I can fill it out and do the same for you?
A. People can chop this apart and answer if they like

the gamers board is down...

lowerycm@gmail.com — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 04:09:05 GMT

This is the third day.

This makes me sad :(

Actually, not into incest thanks

lowerycm@gmail.com — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 10:30:47 GMT

Your Score: House Lannister

63% Dominant, 45% Extroverted, 72% Trustworthy

Confident. Dangerous. Unrelentingly sexy. The master of all you survey, you are of House Lannister.

You are a dominant personality—and how! When someone asks “and who are you, the proud lord said, that I should bow so low?” your response is probably, “FUCK YOU! I’m a fucking LANNISTER, that’s who the HELL I am!” And then you’d pimp-slap them with your golden hand. All joking aside, you view leadership as your natural, god-given right; it is a trait, just like your golden curling hair and irresistible sex appeal. It’s who you are—a Lannister.

You are introverted, meaning that you prefer to keep your ambitions and devices to yourself. Unfortunately, your personality is so vivacious that (despite all your intended secrecies) you are still a very obvious person. Though no one knows what avenues you will travel, your destination is clear to all. And of course, yours is a road to greatness! You have a magnetic, polarizing personality: people either love you or hate you. They also probably find you exceedingly intimidating. Their fear is probably well-placed.

Finally, you are trustworthy. Does this surprise you? Remember your unofficial motto: “A Lannister always pays his debts.” Though you enjoy keeping secrets and playing games, everyone knows you are a major player. Underhanded tactics are so expected from you that they don’t particularly count as untrustworthyness—it’s more of a family legacy than a choice. Your promise is as good as the gold that you shit.

Representative characters include: Tyrion Lannister, Jaime Lannister, and Tywin Lannister

Similar Houses: Greyjoy, Stark, and Targaryen

Opposite House: Tyrell

When playing the game of thrones, you play it balls to the wall.

Link: The Song of Ice and Fire House Test written by Geeky_Stripper on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Sigh

lowerycm@gmail.com — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 13:53:19 GMT

Pretty much broke till Monday (stupid job)

Girlfriend has moved out of the country permanently (stupid job market)

accommodation search is still going badly. (stupid housing market)

Research is going slow (stupid research papers)

Feeling the after effects of eating too much hamburger last night (stupid me - though in my defense it was delicious)

Strangely, still relatively content though. Possibly it's the pound of beef.

In other news: Anyone else find themselves growing gradually more intolerant when they notice pop culture/writer induced ignorance in their expert fields? Just finished reading a "hard" Sci-Fi short story where the writer didn't understand ceramics or Carbon bonding. Infuriating...

Descent of man - or truth is stranger than fiction

lowerycm@gmail.com — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 00:02:31 GMT

This came up in conversation with some mates earlier today (while I was legging it for a bus) & I figured I should explain why I find it funny:

About 1000 years ago, an ancestor of mine died within arrow shot of my current home. How do I know this?

Short answer is a cousin of mine plotted a partial genealogy (complete with scratches & dead ends) for our family back that far for a masters.

I’m more than a little proud of him. It sounds like a pompous arrogant thing to do till you realise genealogists love to study noble families because it means their family tree is well recorded & itemised ahead of time. My cousin (second to be exact) spent 5 years of his life trawling through attics & parish records to link the last few centuries of messy Connaught family backwards. A hard thing to do, you’ll admit, even in well maintained archives (one link was found by a priests great-niece in a marriage cert shoved into a picture frame she inherited).

Eventually, he broke through the hard part & found a nice well recorded line to zip back along.

So who was the ancestor who died near me? Brian Boru – I’m descended through Diarmuid MacMurrough on my mothers side by fluke.

Why do I find it amusing? Simple.

Statistically about 90% of the population of Connaught are related to Diarmuid MacMurrough (No really it’s called MRCA theory – in a nutshell you can mathemathically prove common ancestry due where random breeding is possible).

Few of these have someone in their family driven enough to get back that far. Fewer have someone that driven succeed.

I think my family is probably unique in that the driven genealogist is himself called Dermot McMorrow.

Is the Renaissance man dead?

lowerycm@gmail.com — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 16:18:15 GMT

It’s been a long time since I wrote something more than a status update so I feel I might as well try writing up something that’s been niggling at me for a while & really struck home when I went to see the Codex Leicester in the Chester Beatty.

The Renaissance man or Polymath is often held up as the intellectual pinnacle to aspire to. A man who has encyclopaedic knowledge of many fields is considered a better creature than someone who has a single field of expertise.

Ask someone on the street to name a historical genius and the name which springs to most minds will be Leonardo Da Vinci. Painter, Sculptor, Mathematician, Engineer, Anatomist & Architect – sounds impressive & it is.

However, any Engineer by necessity has to be a Mathematician, a civil engineer has the ability if not the artistic flair to be an Architect and a Sculptor & painter must understand anatomy. So it compresses to Leonardo Da Vinci, Engineer & Artist. Still that’s pretty impressive.

Now, as an engineer, Da Vincii wasn’t the genius people like to assume* – many of his designs were cribbed from earlier works or fundamentally flawed, in his observations he frequently discounts evidence that he could not make fit his personal theories, his mathematical work was propped up by his teacher & collaborator Pacioli & it’s recorded that he was unable to even solve a simple static balance problem for a statue of a rearing horse (Michelangelo supposedly used to abuse him about this at every opportunity).

So why do people obsess over him when other equally broad/broader talents such as those of Ibn al-Haytham, Newton (look it up – his laws of motion weren’t the only thing he achieved) or even Michelangelo are ignored?

Simple. None of the others were bastard offspring who wrote backwards, survived on four hours sleep a night, spent their lives scurrying from location to location or left thousands of pages of cryptic, unclear & iconic looking notes behind them (regardless of what little they say – they look very much as genius writing is imagined).

Da Vinci is primarily held up as an icon because he was a larger than life romantic figure rather than because of what he actually achieved.

* It’s worth noting at this point that I’m writing this as Devil’s advocate. Da vinci was of course extremely talented (I’m still not convinced that he deserves all the attention that is lavished on him though). In fact, Da Vinci was one of the reasons I ended up studying engineering

[There’s also a second idea on the Renaissance man as an ideal which I may get round to posting sometime. I’ll probably clean this entry up later]

Results

lowerycm@gmail.com — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 11:34:23 GMT

I'm now a qualified engineer - with a 1st class degree.

Vaguely scary.

I guess this means I'll be doing that postgrad

FRRRREEEEEEEEEE!

lowerycm@gmail.com — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 16:32:31 GMT

That's all folks

Questions and answers meme

lowerycm@gmail.com — Tue, 22 May 2007 17:08:43 GMT

Asked of me by blackrobedone...

1: Why did you chose the course you're doing in College?

I wanted a general well rounded degree. There was about 4/5 worthwhile seeming ones & this was one of them.
It was also one of two of them that would get me a useful profession. Added to this, about half my family are engineers of some shape or form - so it wasn't too hard.

I'm pretty happy with it by and by - though some aspects of it have been terrible (Supply chain for example)

2: Why not 'Larry'?

Nothing too interesting I'm afraid.

The short version is I used to have a fairly bad set of speech impediments when I was younger (including the inability to pronounce the letter R and slur sounds) and went through a lot of speech therapy over a long period of time to get rid of them.

As a result, until I was about 10 it used to take me 5 minutes to get across to someone new that my name wasn't in fact Larry or Colm Labby. So getting called that kind of makes me more than a little uncomfortable these days (Once or twice mistakenly is grand - it's just something I'd prefer not to get stuck with being called daily by people).

I count myself lucky that all I now have is a tendency to stutter when uncomfortable and whistle the letter s when drunk. :)

3: What's your favourite RPG setting?
Deadlands or Deadlands: Hell On Earth without a doubt.

Hard to explain it's appeal other than the fine line it walks between B-movie Shclock, steampunk and western cliches, faustian deals, good solid writing and logically building each part of the setting on the bones of the last and on real world history.

It just hangs together well (with the notable exception of some of the odder and more obscure sections - killer cult of doom tomatoes anyone?).

SLA is also excellent in a hard to run kind of way.

4: What's your favourite RPG Rules-set?

Hard to choose.

Savage worlds is nice and simple - which is good but can sometimes feel too simple (in addition it has a strong bias towards bennies being the be all and end all).

DL classic is nice and great fun to play but very very slow (hours per round for a big gunfight).

I quite like gurps basic -though the whole line's a little too bloated and variant filled at this point.

On balance, probably SW - anyone suprised?

5: What do you think is the best way of handling player-NPC social interactions in an
RPG?

Just mechanics is boring for everyone, just talking is kind of unfair on a shy/undiplomatic player and biased towards players with self confidence and charisma

Striking a balance between the two is good but the exact balance should depend on the situation, player and GM.

The D20 classifications of NPC states is definitely a complete load of crap though.

This is the drill: leave a comment and I will ask you five questions, you answer them in your journal and make the same offer to your friends.

Post Grad

lowerycm@gmail.com — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 17:12:01 GMT

Well, I had my final talk with my "supervisor" for next year.

I've been told to make my formal application for next years postgrad - in other words I've got my funding provisional on meeting the tcd standards for postgrad (2.1 or higher degree).

Feels good

Saw this and thought of you guys

lowerycm@gmail.com — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 09:46:34 GMT

What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Literature Nerd Does sitting by a nice cozy fire, with a cup of hot tea/chocolate, and a book you can read for hours even when your eyes grow red and dry and you look sort of scary sitting there with your insomniac appearance? Then you fit this category perfectly! You love the power of the written word and it's eloquence; and you may like to read/write poetry or novels. You contribute to the smart people of today's society, however you can probably be overly-critical of works. It's okay. I understand.
Science/Math Nerd
Gamer/Computer Nerd
Drama Nerd
Artistic Nerd
Social Nerd
Anime Nerd
Musician
What Be Your Nerd Type? Quizzes for MySpace

Life is pretty good

lowerycm@gmail.com — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 20:08:14 GMT

Hmmm. where to start.

1.) Thesis is going better than I'd thought - turns out I've lots more to say than I'd thought (though a windows bug just robbed me of 3 pages I'd written -apparently 2 gigs isn't enough space to be allowed save a word document).

2.) Back taking mild steroids for my lungs (a few years ago, I had a bad infection which left me less able to absorb oxygen, so I'm meant to take a steroid to keep my heart rate up -exactly the same as many asthmatics), so on the plus side I don't feel achy or jacked tired all the time - though I do tend to crash and feel very sleepy about 12 hours after I take it. Not sure if that's meant to happen but it's definitely better than the alternative.

3.) No imminent college deadlines for the first time since October (the next deadline is my thesis in 4 weeks or so).

4.) As a result of 1,2 and 3 my sleeping patterns are going back to normal. This is really one of the reasons I feel good.

Weird

lowerycm@gmail.com — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 15:23:27 GMT

Apparently I'm an expert in medical micro biology.

http://www2.ulster.ac.uk/staff/cj.lowery.html

Kind of unusual for a number of reasons. I guess I'll explain the main one in a rough cut way.

My family name is old Ulster Irish and extremely uncommon there.

Lowry is the far more common variant name (coming in from Scotland in the 1700s) and Lowery is a comparatively rare version coming from Labhradha a much earlier Ulster sept (which was amusingly stamped out, except in co. Down by the plantation which brought over the scots Lowry family in the first place).

Then, Cromwell came. Those who kept the catholic associated Labhradha (Lowery)surname ended up getting shunted down to Connacht (which is where my family is from. Specifically a village called "cur na mona" [imaginative name isn't it? literally beside the bog] beside Lough Corrib). Those who stayed in co. Down mostly switched to using Labrai (the gaelic version of the Scots Lowry name) and changed religion or were wiped out when the 1641 rebellion was put down.

So, while there's a fair amount of crossover between the two names (so much that Lowry and Lowery is classed as a single Polygenetic surname with two distinctly different coats of arms associated with it (see below). It's pretty unusual to find an Ulster Lowery these days.

I'm kind of curious if "Colm Lowery 2" spells his second name Labhradha or Labrai in Irish

Filthy habit memes

lowerycm@gmail.com — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 11:15:43 GMT

Comment me and I will:

1) Tell you why I friended you.
2) Associate you with a song/movie.
3) Tell a random fact about you.
4) Tell a first memory about you.
5) Associate you with an animal/fruit.
6) Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
7) Show you my favourite user pic of yours.
8) In retort, you MUST spead this disease in your LJ.

Monte Hall and how 4 years of decision theory screws with you

lowerycm@gmail.com — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 11:47:03 GMT

Probability is less of a science and more of a black art.

A solid example of this is the Monte Hall problem.

For those of you unfamiliar with it, it goes like this.

There are 3 doors. Behind 2 of these doors lies a boobie prize, behind the last lies the reward you want.

You pick a door.

Monte then picks one of the remaining two doors to reveal a boobie prize & gives you a chance to switch door.

Should you switch or should you stay?

99% of people will get this question wrong first time. I guarantee it.

Now, the "correct" answer is you double your chance of a correct answer by switching door (think about it some more and you'll see why). However, decision theory says other things about it.

Essentially, the same kind of intuitive block responsible for the original wrong answer will push you towards a favourite solution (switch? nah, I'll always stick). This differs from person to person. We call this bias.

What I'm wondering about is: does this explain Mick and Fatz ability to only roll 20s? Are they statistically biased? ;)

Stressball

lowerycm@gmail.com — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 14:17:12 GMT

This is inspired by a post by brohnos. Mainly his post dealt with fighting off the African-Roman rebellion with his family...but part of it got me thinking. ;)

Specifically it was his comment about people needing to relax and slow down. Recently one of my other mates mentioned to me that he's never seen me just sit down and do nothing for a while.

Thinking about it - he's right.

I constantly require something to do - whether it's reading a book, playing a game, fiddling, pacing, eating, tidying notes, rewriting notes, making stupid puns, listen to music, watch films, pace then stand and so on. Hell, even when trying to get to sleep I work through maths in my head.

The Warpcon weekend is the first time since October I can conclusively say I did nothing productive for a period of two days.

So, humour me on this, what about you people? I've a pet theory on which groups will turn out to be which. (I'll share it later).

So pacer or spacer? ;)

Seems vaguely appropriate

lowerycm@gmail.com — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 17:44:08 GMT

the Prankster

(47% dark, 26% spontaneous, 15% vulgar)

your humor style:
CLEAN | COMPLEX | LIGHT

Your humor has an intellectual, even conceptual slant to it. You're not pretentious, but you're not into what some would call 'low humor' either. You'll laugh at a good dirty joke, but you definitely prefer something clever to something moist.

You probably like well-thought-out pranks and/or spoofs and it's highly likely you've tried one of these things yourself. In a lot of ways, yours is the most entertaining type of humor because it's smart without being mean-spirited.

PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Conan O'Brian - Ashton Kutcher

The 3-Variable Funny Test!

- it rules -

If you're interested, try my best friend's best test:
The Genghis Khan Genetic Fitness Masterpiece

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 41% on darkness
You scored higher than 6% on spontaneity
You scored higher than 4% on vulgarity

Link: The 3 Variable Funny Test written by jason_bateman on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Heh

lowerycm@gmail.com — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 21:20:00 GMT

I moan a lot.

It's probably a large part of people's impression of me.

I guess I'm just putting this here where most people will see this.

Thanks all for putting up with my incessant whining (& me) with good nature.

Wow

lowerycm@gmail.com — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 15:56:41 GMT

I just got asked to write a paper on the strength of my midterm presentation.

That's a bit of a shock (in a good way)

Fair Play

lowerycm@gmail.com — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 16:04:54 GMT

I've a bad temper... a noticeably bad temper.

Always have, always will (Tiger + stripes and all that shit).

For the last 5 or so years, I've kept it on a fairly short leash (in general).

However, after giving some thought to things (read: times I've lost my temper recently), I've realised something: I've realised there's at least one thing that'll always push my buttons.

That's fair play or specifically the lack of it.

In RL, I make a point of giving everyone a chance (at least at first), paying back debts & generally trying to act well towards other people (not to say I'm a nice person - I'm not).

In RPG's, I take offence at people attempting to dominate groups either by shouting down other players or designing out other people's characters (ie. building a character who makes another player feel redundant by being better at their niche or removing the necessity for that niche).

I also have huge dislike for brick-wall railroading (ie. "I turn left", "you can't - there's a brick wall in the way", "okay, I dissolve the brick wall with this anti-brick spray", "did I say brick, I meant impervium...").

Likewise, skirmish games, CCG's or boardgames- why bother playing if you'll always win, the same way?

Those of you who've known me for a few years probably remember me being very rules orientated when you met me - because rules are how you make sure things are fair right?

Wrong. As Dickens put it, "the law is a ass". Any rigid rule enforced blindly can never be fair.

Isn't the point of gaming to have fun with other people? So why take away from their enjoyment.

Likewise, in RL there's a reason "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is one of the few parts of Christianity universally seen as a good thing.

Groan

lowerycm@gmail.com — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 11:03:54 GMT

Sick again.

Looks like I'll be spending new year's asleep this year.

No Galway or BBQ for me.

Tastes like accreditation

lowerycm@gmail.com — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 11:29:54 GMT

My degree was accredited by the IEI yesterday.

Aside from giving me more letters after my name*, it's pretty important as an Internationally recognized professional qualification.

Hmmm. Kind of hard to explain why this is such a big deal I guess. I'm happy anyway

*If things go to plan I will be B.Sci(Eng) B.A MIEE when I graduate & as long as I practice as an engineer for 4 years after graduation there'd be a Ceng there as well. Hmmm B.Sci(Eng) B.A M.A.I M.Sci(Eng) PHD MIEE FIEE CEng has a certain ring to it ;)

We all love memes right?

lowerycm@gmail.com — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 16:28:48 GMT

You Are an Espresso

At your best, you are: straight shooting, ambitious, and energetic

At your worst, you are: anxious and high strung

You drink coffee when: anytime you're not sleeping

Your caffeine addiction level: high

What Kind of Coffee Are You?

Your Vocabulary Score: A+

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary!
You must be quite an erudite person.

How's Your Vocabulary?

I'm not really that cuddly right?

lowerycm@gmail.com — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 18:19:49 GMT

Have I ever mentioned how I hate it when a quiz forces you to agree with one of two things you don't really agree with.